Name: Anna Bostick's review of Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith
Item: Other Minds
Rating: 3.5
Author: Anna Bostick

Peter Godfrey-Smith

'Brilliant' Guardian Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month (March) SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?

The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life

Other Minds

Dhrumil Patel

To some degree, unity is inevitable in a living agent: an animal is a whole, a physical object keeping itself alive. But in other ways, unity is optional, an achievement, an invention. Bringing experience together—even the deliverances of the two eyes—is something that evolution may or may not do.

The evolution of muscle, derived from tiny fiber-like elements inside cells, created a new means by which life impresses itself on the world. All living things affect their environment by making and transforming chemicals, and also by growing and sometimes by moving, but it is muscle that gives rise to rapid, coherent action on large spatial scales.

The history of life is a history of intermediates, shadings-off, and gray areas.

Neurons cost a grecat deal of energy to run and maintain. Creating their electrical spasms is like the continual charging and discharging of a battery, hundreds of times cach second. In an animal like us, a large proportion of the energy taken in as food, nearly a quarter in our case, is spent just keeping the brain running.

In all but a few animals, the chemical interactions between some cells become the basis for a nervous system, small or large. And in some of these animals, a mass of such cells concentrated together, sparking in a chemo-electrical storm of repurposed signaling, become a brain.

Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own? What does it mean that evolution built minds not once but at least twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. The first nervous systems evolved, probably in ancient relatives of jellyfish; later on, the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous mollusks, abandoned their shells and rose above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so. Taking an independent route, mammals and birds later began their own evolutionary journeys. But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? Drawing on the latest scientific research and his own scuba-diving adventures, Godfrey-Smith probes the many mysteries that surround the lineage. How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually “think for themselves”? What happens when some octopuses abandon their hermit-like ways and congregate, as they do in a unique location off the coast of Australia? By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind—and on our own.

The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

Not what I expected, informative for sure, but takes some time to digest. While the author analyzes all the philosophical questions, scientific experiments, and reasoning for the development of such a species the point becomes lost to me and I have to reread parts (may purely be due to my lack of previous knowledge.) Although he does reference previous discussions in areas of the book which is helpful as he builds his argument. By the end you realize that there is still so much we don’t fully understand a lot due to the difficulty of studying such things in nature which is interesting. I’d recommend to readers who enjoy science, philosophy, evolution, and debate around why some things in this world exist.

Anna Bostick

All of the negative reviews that I’ve seen on here disliked that this book was more Philosophy than biology but I thought it was a really beautiful weaving of the two. Philosophy of the mind is fascinating on its own and I love any merger between philosophy and the environment so this was right up my alley.  Other books that I have read about octopuses and other cephalopods have come no where close to the level of respect for these animals that is found in this book. And to dive into the evolution of the subjective experience through the lens of our many legged aquatic friends was such a fun angle. I definitely recommend! 

Kerry McHugh West

Ed Kay

My low rating may well be unfairly swayed by the fact that I bought this hoping for more of a study of octopuses specifically, and this book was about 'intelligence' more generally and looking at the different types of intelligence that evolution has ended up creating. There are a few anecdotal stories about octopuses escaping their tanks to eat fish and some discussion of how they can change their skin colour but they are all too brief. The rest of the book deals more in the current scientific understandings of what intelligence means and how it might have evolved and while interesting, not really what I was looking for.

The author's style was a bit wishy washy. He often referenced research in passing but didn't offer any details about the experiments or how they worked, leaving you wanting more, and sometimes unclear as to how these unexplained studies actually related to the points he was trying to make.

For example:

rats with a severed spinal cord, and hence no channel from the site of body damage to the brain, can exhibit some of what looks like “pain behavior,” and can even show a form of learning that responds to the damage

Ooh, interesting! What kind of pain behaviour do they exhibit? What learning do they show? How do they respond to the damage? All of these are relevant questions, but remain unanswered, and I kind of wish he hadn't mentioned it at all.

Matthew Royal

Good insights into what the definition of intelligence can be, and identifying our own chordate biases when approaching the development of artificial intelligence. 

At points, he waxes philosophical, but never very deeply. I'd be more interested in examining how our monolithic human brain biases us when we think about our thoughts, our bodies, or intelligence. Explore the idea that our integrated subjective experience called "consciousness" is largely independent of our body's mechanisms for deciding to lift our arms or move toward food, as measured by neuroscientists who (perhaps wrongly) interpret it as neurological proof of our lack of "free will."

Even speculation into octopus qualia -- what does it feel like to be an octopus with semi-autonomous limbs -- or perhaps some thought experiments drawing analogies between human patients with inactivated brain regions vs an octopus with missing limbs.

Interesting, if a bit unfocused. The news that cephalopods use extensive RNA editing to modify their brain structure came out about 4-5 months after this book was published, but I can't help but feeling that the author tilted more toward the side of diving into the water and playing with them to collect fun stories rather than toward the side of studying them in a lab and understanding the underlying physical mechanics. Even Disney in the movie "Finding Dory" spent considerable time writing software to simulate the physics and autonomy of Hank the octopus's limbs.

Izza

2.5 stars | I thought I would be more captivated than I was...

Melanie Richards

Half and half on this one. Found the evolutionary biology bits very interesting, the philosophical bits less so. Lots of conjecture and a rather abrupt conclusion.

What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself - a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind's fitful development from unruly clumps of seaborne cells to the first evolved nervous systems in ancient relatives of jellyfish, he explores the incredible evolutionary journey of the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous molluscs who would later abandon their shells to rise above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so - a journey completely independent from the route that mammals and birds would later take. But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually 'think for themselves'? By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind - and on our own.

Jade Flynn

3.5/5 This oceanic tour de force is for all those who are inquisitive about the aquatic life in our world which is sometimes sadly forgotten about, as only a small percentage of us, get to witness the true wonder of our oceans. The delightful octopus anecdotes which are drizzled throughout were utterly charming. The only problem? I wanted more. The main flaw that I found is that the narrative felt a bit disjointed and lost because I think Godfrey-Smith tried to write two books in one. It appeared as if he wanted a book primarily explaining (although immensely interesting) the nervous system and consciousness, using Octopuses as a means to get there. It would have worked better if this was reversed. It cost him an of abundance detail about both the Cephalopoda's and evolution itself. I'm certain this book would have been breathtaking if it was three-hundred pages longer or divided into two books, one on each subject in more extensive detail. Either way, I feel much closer to our marine ancestors of 600 million years ago. Overall, this non-fiction is a good jumping off point to see if you possess an interest in Octopuses but after you finish maybe find a book solely on the astonishing animals that they are.

Kieran Wood

Overall I would highly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in marine biology, philosophy of consciousness or evolutionary biology. Peter has done a great job of keeping the book interesting, and keeping the content in the book quite original. I have read several other books about evolutionary biology, and philosophy of consciousness and after a while they often start to sound the same. This book steps beyond that and presents really interesting collections of information and some unique perspectives and arguments about these topics.

Ch 1:
Nothing incredibly interesting, but if you don't have much background in evolutionary biology or philosophy of consciousness it gives a good high-level overview.

Ch 2:
This chapter was a strong way to start a book. It was really interesting going through a lineage in the way the author does. I found myself re-reading and taking notes for things to look into later.

Ch3:
The pace picks up quite a bit in this chapter. There are significantly more technical details about neurochemistry and anatomy in this chapter than before. Likewise the chapter gives an interesting view of the decentralized nature of cognition that cephalopods employ. Well written, but a bit dense compared to the previous two chapters.

Ch 4:
This is where the book starts getting really interesting. I am not incredibly well versed in neurobiology, but typically in most books like these there's nothing new under the sun. Usually it is the same insights recycled from one book to the next, but this time it was not. Towards the end it is harder to follow what is being said, but I think this is the first book in a while where the content is uniquely foreign to me.

Ch 5:
This was an incredibly interesting chapter surrounding how color is used in cephalopods, and more broadly about the influence of language on consciousness. It is however by far the farthest chapter to follow in some sections. I suspect a few more diagrams about certain topics would have been valuable.

Ch 6:
This chapter expands on the influence of language and consciousness massively. It also talks about the notion of feedback loops, and how important they are to our own sense of self. While I followed the chapter quite well I would imagine it is difficult to glean some of the details if you have never read some of the philosophers mentioned before. The descriptions of their work was not the best in some cases, especially Hume.

Ch 7:
A very interesting but albeit odd chapter. This chapter is much more existential than I would've expected in a book about how octopus got smart. In all seriousness though it's interesting to see a chapter dedicated to tackling the utility of death from both an evolutionary biology and philosophical perspective. In a sense the evolutionary side aimed at species conservation, and the philosophical side on why you would want consciousness even if you have a short life. The second point mostly culminating in the answer that especially in such a short life it seems like you need the additional hardware to adapt quickly and make the most out of the time.

Ch 8:
The last chapter develops an interesting argument about the future path for evolution in cephalopods, and how they may be heading down the same roads as many other "intelligent" animals. It also has a very good summary and overview of the previous chapters with some additional details to help them all fit together.

Dhrumil Patel &
Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith

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